Dear Friends,
These are trying times. My thoughts are with all of you who are coping with isolation, fear, and possibly even sickness.
It is with great sadness that we are announcing the cancellation of the 2020 David Foster Wallace Conference in Austin. We are a truly international organization with members, registered attendees, and presenters from Italy, Spain, France, U.K., Ireland, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and many other countries. With the closing of borders, the cancellation of flights, and quarantine restrictions, it is simply not possible for us to gather together in person in early June of this year.
Much work and planning has gone into the event and I want to thank everyone who has worked tirelessly over the past year to make the 2020 Conference in Austin the best ever. I specifically want to thank Megan Barnard and Lisa Pulsifer at The Harry Ransom Center, Shaun Jordan of Artemis Capital Management, and Martin Kevorkian, chair of English at the University of Texas, for their unwavering support of the conference and the Society.
Anyone who has paid for their registration will be refunded–or you can choose to donate your registration fee to help us recoup some of our 2020 lost fees and costs.
Our 2021 Conference will be held in Amsterdam and the conference chair will be Allard Den Dulk. The Conference will be in Austin in 2022 and in Gettysburg, PA in 2023. We will have more information about the Jennifer Egan event at the Ransom Center in the coming weeks. (Note that with the cancellation of the 2020 American Literature Association Conference, the David Foster Wallace Society panels and Business Meeting at ALA are also cancelled.)
We are announcing that the winner of the inaugural Charles B. Harris Award for Undergraduate Writing is awarded to Cathy Preciado of the University of Texas. She will receive a check for $500 and an opportunity to present her paper at a future conference.
There is some guidance out there for how to add a cancelled conference presentation to your CV: https://apastyle.apa.org/blog/canceled-conferences
No one is more disappointed about this than me. It’s been my dream for years to host the conference in Austin. Please bear with us as we are still working through the details of unraveling all of our plans. Reach out to me with any questions or concerns and we will do our best to help you get through this.
Sincerely,
Matt Bucher
DFW202 Conference Chair
[email protected]
512-709-5344m
